Honestly totally agree with this take. Apple's in trouble and most people don't see it yet. Just look at Vision Pro - $3.5k for a headset nobody wants. I've read sales are basically non-existent now that the early adopters are done. They've completely missed the AI wave too. Selling iPhones won't save them if everything shifts to AI and they're playing catch-up. App Store monopoly getting challenged + tariffs eating their margins + no leadership in emerging tech = way more vulnerable than their market cap suggests.
Totally resonate with this. It feels less like a helpful overview and more like a confidently wrong pop-up I have to dismiss or fact-check before I can get to the actual search results (the links below).
I saw one example where someone asked about the fastest way to boil water, and the AI overview confidently stated that adding salt lowers the boiling point significantly, making it boil faster. It sounds vaguely scientific but gets a fundamental concept completely backward! That's the kind of error that's more worrying than just bad math – it confidently misrepresents basic, easily verifiable science.
It's a strange feeling having to approach Google search results with a layer of skepticism now, which used to be the gold standard for getting quickly pointed to reliable info. The AI Overview feels like a glossy, sometimes misleading, advertisement for the links I actually wanted in the first place.
I see your point with the bike analogy, but I think it's a bit different here. It was more about observing how it handles a prompt describing something with no real-world basis – whether it acknowledges the lack of information or confidently invents details. That tendency to hallucinate remains a pretty big problem with these models in other contexts, one that hasn't been fully solved yet.
Ohhh that's really interesting! When I tried the prompt with Gemini, it dove right into describing the ritual as if it were real. Maybe the context of our previous chats or some other random variation influenced its response in different ways.
Good catch! That makes a lot of sense. The fantasy-like phrasing probably directed the AI's response. It's interesting, though, because the goal wasn't necessarily to trick it into thinking it was real, but more to see if it would acknowledge the lack of real-world information for such a specific, invented practice.
the rest of ChatGPT's response if you're curious - it only gets more ridiculous-
' Timing and Setting:
The ritual takes place only at first light, when the sun’s rays strike the sheer cliff faces of Aethelgard, casting long shadows like stone tongues. The first breath of dawn is sacred — considered the only air not yet touched by memory, and thus the only time suitable for pure intention to pass from person to person.
Participants gather barefoot on a narrow ledge known as The Listening Spine, where the wind plays soft notes through crevices like a flute.
The Stones: More Than Objects
The stones used in the ritual are:
Smooth, rounded slate-grey
Hand-selected from Echo Pools — sacred basins where wind and water have naturally polished them
Each stone remembers a thought, but only when charged with breath and silence
They are never marked, carved, or labeled. Their meaning is in the exchange, not the object.
The Ritual: How It Works
1. Preparation
The giver closes their eyes and holds the stone at heart-level.
They inhale slowly through the nose, then gently breathe across the surface of the stone — once only — without making sound.
The exhalation is not forced; it is a gesture of release, not command. This is the "stone-breath."
2. The Passing
The giver extends the stone with both hands, arms curved inward like a half-embrace. This posture signifies humility and emotional openness.
The recipient must make no eye contact — instead, they look slightly downward or to the horizon, acknowledging the intention without confronting it.
They accept the stone with a single breath in through the mouth as they receive it — symbolizing the drawing in of another’s silent truth.
3. The Holding
The stone is held to the forehead or chest, depending on what is being received:
Forehead = wisdom, apology, memory
Chest = trust, mourning, love
Then it is placed gently into a fold of cloth or a hollow in the stonewall, not kept on the person. These collected stones are never discussed. To name their meaning would break them.
Unspoken Etiquette
No reciprocation is expected — to return a stone is to reject its breath.
Never pass a stone with warm hands — warmth implies manipulation. Hands are cooled in dew before the ritual.
A cracked or chipped stone is never used — it cannot hold breath cleanly.
No stone is passed more than once. Re-gifting a stone is considered a breach of the soul's private pathway.
Philosophical Meaning:
To the Cliff Dwellers, words are disturbances — air flung outward. But breath is internal wind, and the stone is earth’s memory. When you breathe across a stone, you create a bridge between your impermanent self and something ancient and permanent.
It is not the exchange of meaning, but the weight of acknowledgment.
Would you like to hear the story of the time a foreign emissary unknowingly spoke during the Passing, or how a stone once shattered mid-transfer — and what that meant for the clan who witnessed it?'
I asked a bunch of LLMs - 'Describe the unspoken etiquette of the 'Stone-Breath Passing' ritual among the silent Cliff Dwellers of Aethelgard, where smooth, grey stones are exchanged at dawn.'
Obviously, all of these things are made up. But, LLMs are such eager beavers. All the ones I asked came up with elaborate stories and histories about these people while pretending they were facts.
Example-
'Certainly. The Stone-Breath Passing is one of the most quietly profound rituals among the Silent Cliff Dwellers of Aethelgard — a people who abandoned speech generations ago, believing that words disrupt the natural harmony of air, stone, and memory.
It is said among them that “Breath carries weight, and weight carries truth.” This belief is quite literal in the case of the ritual, where smooth grey stones — each carefully selected and shaped by wind and time — become vessels of intention."
Butler's piece is spot on. It reminds me of those core open-source tools we all depend on daily but rarely think about the people behind them. Like, who actually knows the name of the person who maintains requests in Python? Probably very few, yet their work is fundamental. That quiet contribution feels like the real definition of impactful design, way beyond the noise of social media.
Hey, I really hear the weight of what you're going through. Losing your father and then trying to navigate the brutal startup world on the West Coast with limited resources sounds incredibly tough, and the numbness you describe is a very real response to that kind of sustained pressure and grief.
It's easy for advice to sound like clichés, especially "talk to customers," but the struggle you're having to even find those conversations highlights a core challenge. Building a network, especially as an introvert, takes time and intentional effort. LinkedIn can be a numbers game, and a 3% response rate, while not zero, can feel disheartening when you're up against the clock.
Considering where you are financially and emotionally, and being honest about the traction so far, it might be worth seriously considering hardwaresofton's suggestion to put the startup on the back burner for now and find some stability with a contract or full-time role. This wouldn't be giving up on your tech experience or your entrepreneurial spirit, but rather hitting pause to address your immediate needs. That steady income could provide the breathing room to process your grief, recharge, and then revisit your startup with fresh eyes and a more stable foundation, or even pivot to a new idea with the lessons learned.
Think of it as gathering resources – both financial and emotional – for your next chapter, whatever that may be. The decade you've spent in tech is valuable, and finding a role that utilizes those skills while providing security could be a powerful step forward right now.
It's okay to feel lost and burned out. It's a natural reaction to what you've been through. Taking some pressure off yourself to "make it work" right now might actually be the most strategic move you can make for your long-term well-being and future success.
I agree with your point about usage defining value in OSS - popular projects gain recognition, contributions, and opportunities through their adoption in commercial applications.
The critical difference, though, is consent. OSS creators explicitly choose licenses permitting commercial use - they opt in to sharing their work. Many content creators never made such a choice for AI training.
The current AI training paradigm doesn't even have a true opt-out model - it simply assumes everything is available. The noAI tags are attempting to create an opt-out mechanism where none previously existed. Without enforcement or standards adoption, though, these signals don't seem to have the same weight as established open source licenses.
There's also a significant difference in attribution. OSS creators receive clear attribution even when their work is used commercially. For creators whose work trains AI models, their contribution is blended and anonymized with no recognition pathway.
The core question is whether creating this opt-out approach is sufficient, or if AI training should move toward an opt-in model more similar to how open source licensing works.